He says, given how the process has prevented the three bodies from moving forward, they would be wary of any further amalgamation efforts.

"We couldn't really make decisions," he said.

"Say the shires, they required extra equipment but they were holding back for the amalgamation process, we wanted to do stuff in other job areas but we couldn't because we needed to wait for the amalgamation issue to clear itself.

"The town and the shire have been through this, in the lead-up exercises to this, three or four times now and it's fallen over.

Free trade is the oldest argument in federal politics and the issue that literally defined the federation era but opposition exists to the TPP, courtesy of the Investor-State Dispute Resolutions clause.